Network browsing applications allow a computer user to view the contents of a network. Some network browsing applications, like Windows Explorer distributed by the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., focus on specific types of networks and/or files. For example, Windows Explorer is primarily oriented toward browsing files in a local area network. Other network browsing applications, such as Netscape Navigator, distributed by Netscape Corporation of Mountain View, Calif., or Internet Explorer, distributed by the Microsoft Corporation, allow users to install “plug-in” applications that allow the network browsing application to work with additional file types. Additional examples of network browsing applications, also referred to herein as “browsing applications” for simplicity, include, without limitation, internet browsers, mail programs with browsing capabilities, file-sharing applications, and any application which provides the capability to browse resources either on an external network (e.g., the internet) or an internal network. Such applications may be separate from or integrated into an operating system.
Some web sites that can be accessed by network browsing application include content that changes over time. Examples of such web sites include news sites, such as CNN.com or FoxNews.com, as well as blogs, weather sites, discussion forums, project status sites, and the like. Some network users are members of projects or forums related to a particular topic, or may merely be interested in tracking changes to a particular site (e.g., breaking news stories). For at lest the last decade, the only way to monitor changes to a particular site was to visit all site's pages on a regular basis. However, a relatively new technology, referred to as “syndication”, allows a network user to easily view, and even receive, content changes made since the network user last visited the site. A high-level description of one syndication technology, known as Really Simple Syndication or RSS, is provided at http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The specification for RSS 2.0 can be found at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss, and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. An alternative syndication technology, known as Atom, is described in a series of Internet Drafts submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which can be reviewed at http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-11.txt, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-05.txt, and http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-autodiscovery-01.txt, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
To view the changes to a site as published using a syndication technology, the network user must utilize a network browsing application compatible with the syndication technology implemented by the site. As the number of syndication technologies increases, and as the technologies mature, network users are likely to become frustrated with individual network browsing applications unless the network users constantly upgrade their software.
What is needed is a means through which network users can more readily subscribe to and browse a syndication feed.